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Posted on March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 by Matt WilliamsThe Giant Magellan Telescope’s 6th Mirror has Just Been Cast. One More to GoBy 2029, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in northern Chile will begin collecting its first light from the cosmos. As part of a new class of next-generation instruments known as “extremely large telescopes” (ELTs), the GMT will combine the power of sophisticated primary mirrors, flexible secondary mirrors, adaptive optics (AOs), and spectrometers to see further and with greater detail than any optical telescopes that came before.At the heart of the telescope are seven monolithic mirror segments, each measuring...

With a resolving power ten times sharper than Hubble and five times sharper than its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, the GMT is a big step up in terms of power. Composed of an array of seven mirrors, each 8.4 m in diameter (some of the largest ground-based telescopes currently have a diameter of 10 m), it will have the capacity of a telescope with a diameter of 24.5 m -- far larger than any telescope built so far... "We are confident that it will have a great impact on our understanding of extrasolar planets, black holes and early...